July will bring mass pay decrease in Washington state

Elizabeth Hovde

The countdown to the collection of the new WA Cares payroll tax is on. There are just a handful days left until W-2 workers will see their paychecks decrease for a benefit they are told by the state to have peace of mind about, even though they shouldn’t.

Beginning in July, W-2 workers will have 58 cents of every $100 they earn taken from their paychecks.

Many workers will not qualify for a WA Cares benefit, even if they pay the tax for a number of years and someday need assistance with the activities of daily life. At $36,500, the lifetime benefit attached to the WA Cares program is also inadequate to meet most people’s actual long-term care needs. Read more about the program being marketed as a sure thing — that isn’t — on the Washington Policy Center website in my story “New state-run program will not fix long-term care crisis, nor should it offer peace of mind to workers forced to fund it.”

Minority-party lawmakers tried to stop the law and payroll tax, to no avail. And every lawmaker now knows that this tax promises more than it will deliver to individuals. The additional money it brings them, however, is apparently too attractive to pass up. Or pride is getting in the way.

Meanwhile, aggressive marketing from the state on the radio and Pandora stations has been busy painting a picture of a mild tax now that will help you with services someday. The marketing doesn’t tell Washingtonians the reasons workers might not qualify for the benefit associated with the program, nor does it discuss the state safety net that already exists to provide long-term care services to people in need.

With WA Cares, the Legislature created a safety net for people in need — and for people not in need. It’s bad policy. In some cases, a low-income worker’s money will go to a person with greater resources for long-term care services. And WA Cares won’t solve the care crisis headed our way.

The state shouldn’t be dictating which life Washingtonians need to save for and how — while not even guaranteeing that Washington workers who pay into WA Cares will reap a benefit. But it is. The tax is coming to a paycheck near you this summer.

Elizabeth Hovde is Washington Policy Center’s director of Center for Health Care and Center for Worker Rights. She grew up in Seattle's Ballard neighborhood and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism and political science from Western Washington University. After graduation, Elizabeth became the communications director for the Washington Family Council. She was recruited away by The Columbian newspaper in Southwest Washington and spent the next decade as an editorial board member and columnist, winning several Society of Professional Journalists awards. She enjoyed another 10 years as a political columnist for The Oregonian. Elizabeth also has taught journalism, as an adjunct professor at Washington State University Vancouver.